ZZ AE If beale street could talk

The process of how he was sent to prison was never meant to protect him, or give him a chance. He
accepted the charges because he was worried that the consequences would be worse if he didn’t

He makes sculptures, thats art done with hands.

Fonny has an artistic passion that makes him free, and he “belongs to no one” (see passage p.33). He
tells her before their first love-making that this passion defines him, and that though she might feel
like she’s not important, she will always be a part of what he does

They are both very loyal to each other- and because they’ve known each other for a very long time,
they know each other very well, and have a very strong connection.

• Diaspora is the involuntarily seperation from a groups origin
• Zion is the promised land
  • Zion stands for an utopian place of unity, peace and freedom
    • Levy, the jew, rents the appartment to them => solidarity between minorities

• Fonny is exposed to a violence he hadn’t known existed, or the extent of which he hadn’t grasped.
• He shows his vulnerability, is exposed to how young he feels (how little he says he knew).
• He seems to have a bad conscience, feels that he has made mistakes (“I’ll be better”)

• “Inferno” - hell
• “Sahara” -> drought, death, heat
• Vultures waiting for death, vultures: lawyers, bondsmen, after money.
• Tish says that “poor people are always crossing the Sahara”- > she perceives an impossibility of getting out of that situation.
• When they get up and walk away from each other, both have to overcome challenges, though not the same ones; Only Fonny is in prison, but Tish isn’t free either

• It is wonderful because he doesn’t lose his mind over the fact that the trial might be postponed indefinitely
• Also, hoping and fixing his mind on something that might never happen would keep him from facing the situation he finds himself in.

Part two is written exclusively in present tense, relying only on what is happening at that moment. It is easier for Fonny to give up hope than to cling to something that may never happen in the future-> may be a statement about the idea of clinging to a hope that may never be fulfilled.

Confrontation with the reality of the situation – including Frank, who commits suicide when he loses his job and hope.

• Open ended.
• Often read as Fonny staying in prison, indefinitely, or possibly dying (baby crying “to wake the dead”).

• Baby cries, repeated 7 times; Meaning of crying: Life (baby is alive),
• protest, being loud (about the story, the injustices),
• pain, new generation, etc.

Many feel that ending is very abrupt, and that reader is left wondering what really happened.

Good ending considered by some: Racism isn’t over, the characters are left in limbo as well, as
readers only fair that we “share” their situation.

Making it clear that Fonny stays in prison would be making a statement about the absence of possibilities, leaving it open leaves a little bit of hope that the situation may still changes for them.

• Song-lyrics describe a very vibrant, lively community.
• Streets see everything, are a witness to what is happening; If the street could talk, it could protect its inhabitants, tell their story to the outside
• Importance of telling a story (if it could talk) that is rarely told outside of Beale Street
• The streets can prove Fonny’s innocence (it is virtually impossible for event to have taken place the way Bell says they did)

Blues music often tells a story in the lyrics. The format of most traditional blues music is AAB. This means the first 2 lines (A & A) are the same, normally with some variation)n, and the 3rd line (B) is different.

(A) Tish and Fonny’s story up to Fonny’s arrest
(A) Tish and Fonny’s story after the arrest
(B) Zion, the last part of the pregnancy and the birth of the baby

Tish is a reliable narrator, and her reactions make sense. She seems very mature for her age, and the
language she uses is very poetic- so possibly not entirely typical, but still credible.

Roughly 9 months, a little shorter if you consider that Tish was already 2-3 months pregnant when she tells Fonny- if we exclude the (chronologically) first strand of the story.

Tish as a first-person-narrator

• came to France (severe poverty) at the age of 24 to write about it at a distance from the society of the United States, and because of strong racism in New York
• Visited Switzerland after a nervous breakdown, especially Leukerbad, wrote his first novel there go tell it to the mountains, published in 1953, semi-autobiographical about growing up black
• Has written two other books, both bestsellers

• Returned to the U.S. at age 33 to be part of the civil rights movement
• Became the literary voice of the civil rights movement in the 1957 debate, esp. racism
• Participated strongly in these debates, was friends with Martin Luther King JR
• Was almost always optimistic that a solution could be found in the long run

• After the assassination of the and other friends, he went back to France, where he wrote if Beale Street could talk => 1974 Was described as bitter
• Died of oesophageal cancer in France in 1987 at age 63

• His works dealt with racism, homosexuality and bisexuality, relationships between people of different skin color
• Music is an important component in many of his works, e.g. Beale Street is a famous song, had many musicians as guests.

•  In the wake of the BLM movement, his works received renewed attention
• If Beale Street could talk was made into a film, the actress of the mother received an Oscar

• James Baldwin was the first black man to arrive in a Welsh village in the winter of 195
• People knew him but didn't speak to him
• They knew he was from America but thought blacks were from Africa
• Children shouted the N-word in the streets
• He came to work on his novel and he did it quietl
• He doesn't think the kids meant it in a consciously racist way
• They also dressed up as blacks at the carnival.

• The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and
  1960s for blacks to gain equal rights under the law in the United States
• The Civil War had officially abolished slavery, but it didn't end discrimination against blacks—they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism, especially in the South
• By the mid-20th century, African Americans had had more than enough of prejudice and violence against them. They, along with many whites, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that endured for two decades.

• Since 1830 issues between north and south, mostly about slavery
  • When Abraham Lincoln, opponent of slavery, got elected 1860, many south states left the union
• 1861 the confederate states (south) startet the american civil war
• 1863 says Lincoln, all slaves in the south are free and are allowed to be part of the north army
• 1865 the south had to surrend and the reconstruction took place
• Slavery got banned in the whole US, they became an industrial state

• During Reconstruction, blacks took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and
  fought for changes in equality and the right to vote
• In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted blacks the right to vote. Still, many whites, especially those in the South,
  were unhappy that people they'd once enslaved were now more-or-less equal
• To keep them separate from whites and erase the progress they'd made during
  Reconstruction, "Jim Crow" laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century
  • Blacks couldn't use the same public facilities as whites, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most blacks couldn't vote.
• Jim Crow laws weren't adopted in northern states; however, blacks still experienced discrimination
• U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for blacks and whites could be "separate but equal.

•  By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most blacks weren't given the better paying jobs. They
  were also discouraged from joining the military
• After thousands of blacks threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights,
  President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin
• Black men and women served heroically in World War Il, despite suffering segregation and discrimination
• As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda
  • This was the basis for the civil rights movement

• A woman who refused to give up her seat in the black bus section for a white man who didnt find one in the white section, got arrested
• As word of her arrest lead to outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the “ mother of the modern
• day civil rights movement."
• Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr., a role which would place him front and center in the fight for civil rights.
• The MIA staged a boycott of the Montgomery bus system, 1956 the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional

• one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement
• It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King .
• More than 200,000 people, black and white, congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone.
• The highlight of the march was King's speech in which he continually stated, "1 have a dream..."

• between 1977 and 2003, about half a million people in the USA were murdered, almost equal numbers of black and white Americans. Yet 80 percent of those executed were convicted of murdering whites
• In 2009, African Americans made up 39.4 percent of the prison population in the United States. These numbers are also significant because in almost all of the states of the U.S., prison inmates with criminal convictions lose the right to vote, which again disproportionately affects African Americans
• in the Southern states, it is often against the recommendation of the jury - when the judges decide on the sentence death penalty. While jury members can be suspected of bias and are questioned closelythis is different with judges
• With high income and wealth, African-Americans today can also afford education and justice. If they do not nevertheless commit themselves out of conviction against poverty and discrimination, such a differentiation in the experience of African Americans also means a division of the group of the oppressed, and this in turn means a relative loss of power.

Baldwin uses the language that is spoken in the families and on the street, instead of a formal one.